This week the curtains went down on the Theatre Department’s spring performance of “Bat Boy: The Musical,” a production that has been growing in fame for the past 18 years since its release in 1997. The musical takes an interesting twist, with its main character, Bat Boy, being comprised of literally half bat and half man. Throughout the performance, audience members are treated to slapstick comedy, irony, campy horror, and themes of hypocrisy, acceptance and revenge, according to StageAgent.com. The Oracle sat down with a couple of leading actors, Jacob Hooper  and Carlye Felton, to learn what this strange and morbid musical is all about.

Hooper is in his second year at Hamline, double majoring in theater and political science. Most recently, he was known as Bat Boy to show attendees.

“I really enjoy the end of each act. The show can be both very funny but also intense and very moving. Both of these scenes really bring that out,” Hooper explained.

When asked what his funniest memory from the production has been thus far, he responded that the backstage interaction is supremely awkward, in the best kind of way. He enjoys joking around with his fellow cast members in their various states of undress, during sexual innuendos, and the overall physicality that happens onstage.

Aside from his leading role in “Bat Boy,” Hooper has been in six productions in his time at Hamline. These include: Hangman Ketch Freeman in “Our Country’s Good,” Sancho Panza in the children’s show “Don Quixote,” and Robert Conklin in the “Rimers of Eldritch,” along with parts this year as Malcolm in “Macbeth” and Father Jack in “Dancing at Lughnasa.”

Hooper  had difficulty deciding which play or musical he had enjoyed working on most.

“Well, honestly, it must be a tie between Bat Boy and when I played Seymour in ‘Little Shop of Horrors.’ I think when we get this in front of audiences though this will surpass ‘Little Shop’. Honestly they are both just really fun and challenging roles to play in musicals that I really like.”

The production that he would absolutely love to be a part of would be “Reefer Madness” a piece that is exactly what it sounds like, i.e. drugs, or the classic, “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Joining Hooper onstage once again was Carlye Felton, a sophomore who is double majoring in theater and digital media arts. While she played a variety of roles in the production, including Doctor, Scary Voice and Fox, her predominant role was Jackie, the secretary to the mayor of Hope Falls, the town in which the show takes place. Felton has been in four other Hamline productions, including “The Rimers of Eldritch” as Eva Jackson in spring of 2014, “The Autism Adventures of Watson and Holmes: Touring Children’s Show” as Spectrum Holmes in January 2015, and “Dancing at Lughnasa” as Chris Mundy earlier this spring.

“My favorite play I have been in was the Rimers of Eldritch. The show was told from a memory perspective so all the events were out of order and the audience had to piece them together themselves,” Felton explained.

There are so many funny, awkward, weird, and everything in between moments in “Bat Boy: The Musical” that it was almost too hard for either actor to pick just one. Felton described one particularly funny scene in which almost the entire cast (men and women) has to wear red high heels. A few weeks into rehearsal, they had started practicing in them and she said it was a great bonding experience to see everyone trying to dance with them on.

That being said, a different moment stole the show for her.

“My favorite scene is the animal orgy or the song is called ‘Children Children.’ In the scene six of us are dressed in giant animal heads and tails and having an animal orgy in the woods,” Felton said.

Felton said her second favorite is the scene where they sang “Comfort and Joy” because she thought the music overall and incorporated dance moves were great.

“I’m so proud of the production as a whole you could really see the dedication and hard work of the cast and crew come through with the end product. I can’t wait to be a part of whatever the Hamline Theatre department comes up with next,” stated Felton just hours before her final performance of the year.